Comic Books

X-Men Monday #283 – Eve L. Ewing Talks ‘Exceptional X-Men’

Plus, an eXclusive look at ‘Exceptional X-Men’ #6!

January 27, 2025

Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!

Exceptional X-Men… has there ever been a more appropriately named X-Men series? Intimate, emotional, hilarious — this Kitty Pryde-focused X-title, written by Eve L. Ewing and illustrated by Carmen Carnero, is something special. I’ve been a fan of Exceptional X-Men since it launched this past September, so I was beyond thrilled to learn Eve was willing to discuss the series, its inspirations, Kitty and the cast, and much more. Let’s see what Eve has to say.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Welcome to X-Men Monday, Eve! While Exceptional X-Men certainly features action, one of my favorite aspects of the series is its confidence to let the story unfold at its own pace, allowing readers to immerse themselves in these characters’ lives. From a storytelling perspective, where do you draw inspiration from?

Eve L. Ewing: Thanks so much! I have to give a lot of credit to the editorial team for letting me get away with this. But it just feels necessary for a series that has a cast of three brand-new characters. Otherwise, how can I expect you to be invested in any of them? Some of my storytelling inspirations in the “slow and steady wins the race” category include Hayao Miyazaki, Lynda Barry, Alan Moore, Zora Neale Hurston, Brian K. Vaughan… I also used to be a middle school teacher, and it’s fun to try to deconstruct the things that made certain series really engaging for my students — Hunger Games, stuff like that.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: That’s an interesting approach — thanks for sharing! From panels at Lulu’s Tavern overflowing with personality to subtle facial expressions that reveal so much about your cast, Carmen Carnero is the perfect artist for Exceptional X-Men. What’s it like collaborating with and writing for such a talent?

Eve: Carmen Carnero is simply phenomenal. I have had the pleasure of working with so many talented artists, and each of them brings their own skill to the table. With Carmen, there’s both a loose comfort and a precision to her work that’s really admirable. Once you get to know an artist and you see how far they can go with you, you learn to give them more and more room to flex, and it’s the best feeling when you know that they’re going to go above and beyond what you even imagined. Her character work is unmatched. Also, she’s fast.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: She’s just exceptional. Now, X-Fan Legacy of X wanted to know what the most challenging part of writing a team with so many characters — some old that readers are very familiar with and others brand new — has been.

Eve: The last time I wrote an ensemble cast was when I did the “Outlawed” event on Champions, and as you point out, that had the benefit of only using established characters. I plot everything out and outline what I want each character’s journey to be, and then kind of plan through how each of those streams will be established over the course of several issues. I try to come up with one big internal conflict and one big external conflict for each character. I think the most challenging part is keeping the fans of the legacy characters happy. Invariably, people want more Emma, Bobby, and Kitty, which I totally love and respect! But they all have decades of stories under their belt, and with just 20 pages per issue, it’s hard giving everyone adequate face time while also providing some basic narrative building blocks for the new folks.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Well, speaking of those new characters, X-Fan Dia was curious to learn the process for coming up with the three new mutants, Bronze, Axo, and Melee. When creating them, was it intentional or just a coincidence for these characters to almost mirror the powers of their new mutant mentors?

Eve: Once the editorial team told me the story was going to be set in Chicago, I started thinking right away about the kinds of people that I grew up knowing and being friends with, and then when I became an educator, the kinds of young people I got to know and be around, that I didn’t necessarily see represented in the lineup we already have — which is tough because there are a lot of mutants out there. But they all came to me really quickly.

Also, early on I decided that the trick was to make sure that each person’s mutant power was somehow at odds with what they wanted for themselves — that way, they would always have a kind of inherent tension. Bronze wants to be tender and gentle but she has super strength; Melee wants to be seen and heard but she turns invisible and people can walk right through her; Axo wants boundaries and authentic relationships and people just spill their guts to him.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

After that, I thought about who would be their natural mentor. I knew that I wanted Thao’s abilities to be similar to Kitty’s, because that would force her to take help and advice, which she hates! The other two sort of worked out by coincidence, but I also think there’s a way that our teachers could find a connection point anywhere if they needed to. That’s part of what makes them good mentors. For instance, Bobby helps Trista with making a physical transformation, but doing so also requires a mental focus that Emma could just as well teach her, or a steeliness (bronziness?) in the face of crisis that Kitty knows how to teach.

AIPT: The perfect segue to a few Kitty questions. First, X-Fan CeCe loooooooves your take on Kate Pryde so much! In only a few issues, you’ve already become one of their favorite writers of the character. What drew you to working on a Pryde-focused book?

Eve: Thanks, CeCe! Kitty’s time on the high seas was one of my favorite aspects of the Krakoan era. (Which is why I wrote a brief crossover where the Champions paid them a visit!) I mean, she’s just awesome. She’s confident, she’s super smart, she’s experienced so much in a relatively short life, she’s a leader, but also feels really grounded. My job is to find something I can connect with on a human level in every character I write, but I feel like Kitty is the rare one where I would really love to get a drink with her in real life.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: X-Fan Ariel was wondering what your favorite Kitty story is.

Eve: I’m a sucker for a holiday special, and I also like stories where scrappy characters have to fight off intruders using whatever they have available (’90s kid + Chicagoan = have seen Home Alone seven hundred million times) so I gotta go with Uncanny X-Men #143, which is basically Home Alone plus Alien, with Kitty fighting off a demon monster that destroys the whole Xavier household. There is one panel where the demon is viewed in profile and it’s literally the Xenomorph. And the whole house just gets wrecked. But I like seeing young Kitty using her smarts to problem-solve!

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: X-Fan Kasi asked, when do you think Kitty *really* realized she was queer? Kasi is so glad she’s dating Nina — they seem like a cute budding couple. :)

Eve: They’re so cute, aren’t they?! I also love Carmen’s character design for Nina. She’s adorable. I think Kitty probably always knew, but compulsory heterosexuality and the lack of some of that language being available — queerness in particular as kind of an expansive way to encapsulate how she’s felt toward a lot of the female relationships we’ve seen her have over the course of her life — would have held her back a bit. Also, she had a very weird adolescence! I’d like to think that Bobby’s journey gave her a new lens on things, and since she’s starting a new life right now anyway, why not go all in on trying things out with a great new person? As we know, cute, healthy couples in comics always last forever and nothing bad ever happens to them, so I’m sure things will work out just fine!

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: One more question from X-Fan Ariel (crushing it, Ariel!), who wanted to know if there’s any chance some of Kitty’s closest friends, like Rachel, Kurt, or Ororo, might show up in the future.

Eve: I sure hope so! I love all three of those characters and would love to see what they bring out in Kitty, especially as she’s in this isolationist period. Especially… [eyes emoji] That said, they’re tied up with various other creators at the moment. We’ll have to do some finagling to see if we can get some reunions going.

AIPT: Fingers crossed! As we wrap up, I am curious to learn what inspired you to bring the Verate app into the X-Men’s world. Also, anything you can tease about Sheldon Xenos?

Eve: In 2018, I went to a fancy event where upon entrance, as welcome gifts, everyone got a free packet of vitamins from a company that would take a sample of your DNA then and there in the conference center and offer you custom nutrition and minerals and whatever. People willingly gave their DNA to a company they had just heard of 45 seconds prior! With absolutely no information about where it would go or what they would do with it! I’m fascinated with what has now become the socially acceptable practice of giving our data to companies that want to make money off of us, especially biometric data, because our bodies are the most personal and intimate and irreplaceable thing we have. I’m curious about what drives us to do that– a sense of belonging?

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Xenos, meanwhile… you’ll just have to see!

AIPT: Finally, Exceptional X-Men has kept to itself since the “From the Ashes” era launched but will crossover with the narrative of other X-series in “X-Manhunt” this March. How has it been coordinating with your fellow X-creators and — potentially — playing with other creators’ toys?

Eve: As a comics creator, I feel really strongly that we have to create intentional onboarding points for new readers, especially younger readers. If people feel like they have to do “homework” to understand a story, they’ll stay away, which is bad for the medium in the long run! So one of the deals I made with Tom Brevoort early on was that I would take on this project if there were opportunities for the stories to be very self-contained, at least in the beginning. This also mirrors the lives of the teens themselves — they don’t quite get the larger picture yet. Trust that that will change relatively soon, though.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

In terms of coordinating with the other X-writers, it’s been a blast. We communicate a lot and do a lot of planning and just bonding and chatting together. I never had anything like that with any of my prior titles. It’s really, really fun and I feel super lucky.

AIPT: And we’re super lucky we got to chat with you about Exceptional X-Men! Thanks for stopping by X-Men Monday, Eve!

Also lucky? You, X-Fans, because this week’s X-Men Monday eXclusive is an early look at the lettered preview pages for Exceptional X-Men #6 (on sale February 19, 2025), written by Eve L. Ewing, illustrated and inked by Carmen Carnero, colored by Nolan Woodard, and lettered by VC’s Travis Lanham.